


The Dispossessed

by Eireann



Series: Wolf in the Mirror [1]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Recovered Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-16 16:47:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4632711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eireann/pseuds/Eireann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post-'In A Mirror, Darkly'.  Malcolm wakes in Sickbay, to the discovery that the blast in which he was caught has had unforeseen side-effects.</p><p>Please note: This story is rated for bad language and implied violence.  If these offend you, please do not read it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rigel99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rigel99/gifts).



> Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no money made.
> 
> This story has not been beta-read and any mistakes in it are therefore mine.
> 
> Author's Note: Readers may be familiar with the stories in my 'Jag' series that began with 'The Waiting Game'. Belen09 gave me the idea that something of the same could have happened in the Mirror Universe, and asked what might ensue if the subject there discovered what had been done to him.
> 
> This story is my response to that interesting question.

“Lie still, Major.  You’re quite safe.”

Hah. ‘ _Safe’_ , indeed!The voice that speaks these words is the clearest testimony I need that I’m anything but safe.  I’m presumably in Sickbay, and therefore I’m about as unsafe as I can get without actually being dead.

My groping hand doesn’t find a pistol beside my thigh, which means I’m technically naked.  Clothes I can do without if I must, but on an Imperial warship you don’t _ever_ let a weapon out of reach – particularly when you’re the Head of Security, and therefore (by definition) not the most popular chap on board.

There again, I’ve regained consciousness and Phlox isn’t leaning over me doing something in my innards, so things could be worse.  Quite a lot worse, in fact.  Though I’d imagine that he’s quite well aware by now that doing something in my innards while I’m here to notice would probably have extremely unpleasant repercussions if I accidentally managed to survive the experience.

My eyes appear to be stuck together with gum, so I force them open.  The right responds fairly readily, if stickily, but for a moment I don’t understand why the vision in my left is restricted.  Then the penny drops.

Bandages.

Phlox is at the bedside, smiling at me.  As if waking up to find myself bandaged wasn’t bad enough. 

The first glance has me inking him in for an hour or two in the Booth.  He’s not nearly quick enough to wipe away the gleeful expression as he glances up at my bio-scan.  Really, he does seem to have a death-wish sometimes, and if he grins at my misfortunes like that once too often I’ll oblige him.

Automatically I try to sit up.  But I don’t try hard, and I certainly don’t try for long.

“I did warn you to lie still,” he scolds.  Yes.  Scolds.  _Me._ He gets carried away sometimes, being the ship’s CMO.  He forgets that when I’m out of here and back as the ship’s CSO, my rank trumps his when it comes to accusations of treason.  He really needs to remember that I can easily arrange for him to get carried away … permanently.

CMO of Rura Penthe.  Has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?

Well.  Appealing as the idea may be, it will have to wait.  The effort it costs me to move, and the pain that’s my reward for it, tell me beyond doubt that my injuries were severe.  I must have been here some while already.  A glance around reveals machines I’m hooked up to and drips attached to my arm.

Slowly memories begin to eddy back into my head.  The Gorn … the trap.  The trap that I fell into like a damned amateur, after all these years.

“Did they kill him?” I ask.  My mouth feels like a Denebian slime devil’s been living in it for a year.  Still, I don’t bother with any alternatives like ‘capture’ or ‘make a deal’; I know exactly what Captain Archer’s techniques for dealing with resistance are.

Much the same as mine, actually, though sometimes I think he’s a bit soft.

“Oh, categorically.”  His mouth takes on a disapproving twist.  “I was hoping he might be captured alive.  I’ve never had the opportunity to study a Gorn’s internal organs.”

Personally, if I’m going to be in here for any length of time I’m rather relieved he was deprived of the opportunity.  I’m by no means averse to the sound of screaming, but a chap needs to get his rest if he’s to recover as quickly as possible, and Phlox doesn’t seem to find the noise particularly distracting when he’s carrying out his little vivisection projects.  Having seen the Gorn on the monitors I can be reasonably certain he wouldn’t go quietly, and although I daresay there would be a certain amount of entertainment value in it I’d probably get bored eventually, or feel like going to sleep or something.

“So what’s my status?” I growl.  “How long will I need to be in here?”

“You sustained quite serious injuries, Major,” he says chirpily.  “I had to remove Foster’s spleen and use it to replace yours.  Fortunately you share the same blood group, so I was able to use other parts of his tissue to carry out other little repair jobs on you at the same time.”

Well, I could have done without that news, though the corollary that the donor probably didn’t survive the experience has both its compensations and its disappointments.  He was a little shite who couldn’t even scheme against me without leaving evidence, and his premature demise has probably saved him from being the next occupant of the Booth as soon as I’m up and about again, but there again I was rather looking forward to prising out his testimony against certain others of my staff who’ve been more astute than he was.  Still, there are enough of my subordinates who are aware of certain little secrets of theirs that will come to light if any harm comes to me, so I’m reasonably sure that they’ll provide me adequate protection while I’m in here; my survival, after all, means theirs.  At a guess, one or two of them have dropped a word or two in Phlox’s ear.  I can’t imagine that the captain will have exerted much pressure on my behalf after I failed him so spectacularly, so the fact that I’m still alive points to someone having intervened.

I have a splintering headache.  And along with the memories, there are other images seeping into my brain: pictures that seem so real that they feel more like memories, but they can’t possibly be any such thing.  When would I have crawled around on all fours among a pack of mangy dog-things? 

I shift carefully towards to my uninjured side as best I can.  The images are so vivid they’re actually scaring me.  I can taste blood in my mouth, but even though my tongue feels as awkward as a block of wood I can’t find any trace of injury – certainly not enough to account for the sweet, metallic taste that coats my teeth, my teeth that are buried in fur and savaging inwards…

“Are you feeling unwell, Major?” 

Fucking hell, I’m nearly grateful for Phlox’s voice, though I’m far from stupid enough to think his sharpened tone comes from any real concern for my health.  Sickbay comes back to me, and with it the sound of an alarm from one of the machines to which I’m connected.

“What’s going on?”  I have difficulty articulating the words.  For reasons unknown, the demand emerges slurred.  Even I think it sounds more like the strangled snarl of an animal.

The doctor’s blue eyes are fixed on the bio-readouts, and his expression is a mixture of surprise, interest and speculation – all three of which hurriedly become muted when he notices me staring coldly up at him.

“Fascinating!”

Being described as ‘fascinating’ by a Denobulan who gets his kicks out of investigating people’s internal organs while they’re still alive and conscious is not guaranteed to improve my mood.  He’s lucky I’m still as weak as a bloody kitten, because otherwise he’d regret applying that word to me.

“What?” I growl, trying to peer upward at the monitor that I know perfectly well will make no sense to me – I can’t read it even when I’m looking at it the right way up, unless it’s the pain receptor indicators, with which I’m reasonably well acquainted.

“Your brain waves.  They’re behaving…” 

_“WHAT?”_

Lucifer knows I’ve been tempted to bite a lump out of the man’s slimy Denobulan hide before now, but never quite so literally. I actually have to restrain myself from lunging at him – or as close to lunging as my weakened state will permit.

“Your brain patterns.  There are two distinct sets of waves.  I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”  He sounds positively thrilled about it, racking up another hour in the Booth in due course.  Still, it goes some way towards explaining the confusion in my head, which seems to be getting steadily worse.

“…Explosion?” I manage to get out.  What I want to ask, of course, is whether this could be some after-effect of the trauma from that fucking bomb that nearly terminated me; I’ve suffered concussion before, but it didn’t feel like this, and even Phlox can undoubtedly diagnose that without finding it ‘fascinating’.

He beams down at me like I’m his latest vivisection subject.  “Do you know, I think you may be right, Major.  I believe it may have triggered memories – probably ones you were conditioned to suppress.”

Memories?  Memories I was conditioned to _suppress?_ I can hardly think straight, but I can think straight enough to know I don’t like that idea – I don’t like it at all.

But although I don’t like it, I bloody well want to know more about it.  Above all I want to know who did the conditioning, and why.  Because when I find out, sooner or later they and I will be having a little conversation.  And I’ll guarantee that by the end of it they’ll be sorry they ever had anything to do with Malcolm Reed crawling around on all fours.  Come to think of it, though, that won’t be _quite_ the end of it.  The end of it will probably be a lot too painful for them to have regrets that specific, except perhaps that they didn’t die before living became this unbearable.

My left hand snatches his wrist.  Even now I can exert some pressure, and he winces.  “Find out,” I hiss.  “Who.  How.  _Why._ ”  There are other questions I want answers for, but those are the most pressing; and right now it’s enough of a problem for me to articulate the important ones without going into the ones that can wait.

Phlox hesitates, and I tighten my grip until he yelps with the pain.

“There may be … some difficulty,” he whines.  “We would have to employ the services of a Vulcan…”

“Of a _what?_ ”  I may be confused, but I understand that much.  And I’ll be damned if I want one of those treacherous pointy-eared bastards getting the idea that they have any kind of power over me.  The captain may enjoy keeping one of them as some kind of pet, but I’ve no illusions: T’Pol feels as much gratitude towards him as an anaconda, and the day he drops his guard with her will be the day her jaws open wide enough to swallow him whole.

My sometime ally bends closer, as if he’s going to share some dirty secret with me.  “Mind melds,” he whispers.  _“Vulcans can share thoughts.”_

I’d heard whispers about this, but never credited them.  Even now my first reaction is to think he’s been taken in.  _Telepathy?_ That conquered, despised race of people the Empire flattened years ago, those monuments to repression who make such a virtue of their lack of emotions?  They have a power that could make them so dangerous to the Empire?

I search his face.  If he’s suddenly developed a death-wish as regards pulling my leg, however, it’s not apparent.  He clearly believes what he’s saying. And it’s not something he’s going to promise me unless he’s absolutely sure he can deliver.  I’m a bad person to disappoint.

I’ve got to think about what I’m going to do about this, how I’m going to turn it to my advantage.  But the first thing I’ve got to do is find out who’s been fucking about in my head, and however sickening the idea may be, if I have to employ the services of a Vulcan then I’ll do it whether I like it or not.  But before then I’ve got certain arrangements to make.  And right now I can’t think clearly enough, so I tell him to keep his mouth shut if he knows what’s good for him.  I need to sleep, and with any luck my mind will be back to normal when I wake up again.  _Then_ he and I will be returning to this little conversation, at which point his facts had better be solid and his memory of them had better be functioning.  (Also, of course, it would be healthy for him if he has an explanation ready as to exactly why he’s never seen fit to mention this interesting little titbit of news before.)

Not that I’ll forget, of course.  I don’t forget anything.  I don’t forgive anything.

And somebody somewhere will be fucking sorry they messed with me.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes a while before I feel up to the demands of what I already know will be a trying experience.

The blast did a lot of damage.  During the time I have to spend practically immobile in Sickbay I amuse myself by designing modifications for the Agony Booth for the next Gorn I come across; there was enough of him left for Phlox to supply me the necessary details, and he and I agree that it will be a challenge.  Humans are really not very resistant to pain, so we need something a bit sturdier to experiment on.

In the meantime, I’m lying low.  It’s almost impossible for me to imagine that the previously Ensign Sato has staged a takeover of the ship, and that Captain Archer is … well, the rumours vary.  He was definitely seen being carried away by a couple of MACOs, and he was either unconscious or dead.  Naturally those who witnessed it didn’t make a show of their curiosity on the occasion.  And he hasn’t been heard from since.

 _Defiant_ is a big ship.  He could be pretty well anywhere.  Those who don’t know aren’t asking, and those who do know aren’t telling.

I know who supplied whatever it was that Sato used, but when I challenged him on it he shut his mouth like a trap and looked like he was going to shit himself.  Whoever obtained it has done a job on him, that’s all I know.  He’s not going to tell me even if I break every bone in his fingers one at a time, and much as I’d enjoy doing so, I can’t be arsed if it’s a) not going to get me anywhere and b) likely to make my excessive curiosity obvious.  Being curious about the fate of a man whose orders I obeyed like a dog is not a survival trait when it’s Hoshi Sato’s delectable arse that’s occupying the Big Chair.  She might start getting ideas about what I might think about doing on his behalf, and right now I’m not in a position to do anything much.  (Come to think about it, I’m not sure I’d do all that much if I was as fit as a fiddle.  It’s not like he turned up at the bedside every day with grapes and a bunch of flowers.)

Oh, one thing I did hear that cheered me up no end – that bastard dog of his ate something that mysteriously disagreed with it.  I don’t even have to _ask_ Phlox about that one; he was tinkering with his bloody vampire bat or whatever it is when Crewman Deloire brought me the daily news bulletin my team know better than to withhold from me, and he was just too slow turning his head away before the grin broke out.

Maybe I’ll cut half an hour off his eventual tally for that.  Fucking dog – it bit me once, to the then-Commander’s immense amusement.  I hope it screamed.

So.  Dogs.  Hairy things.  Given to biting people.  Run around on all fours, though perhaps I’m being a bit hard on them for that.

Phlox has provided a Vulcan.  Not a very old one, I’d guess by human standards he’s about eighteen at most, so he’s probably actually an octogenarian.  Must be new to the ship, because I don’t remember shagging him and he’s remarkably good-looking for an eighty-year-old.  Whoever did the security vet must have kept quiet about him till they’d had their own fun.

(Memo to self: 1. Find out who it was.  2.  Teach them not to do it again.  3.  Order someone to arrange the burial detail.  4.  Manufacture irrefutable proof that they were a traitor to the Empire.  5.  Present it to the Empress with a convincing show of shocked horror.  6. Produce at least three witnesses to the fact that I only fired in self defence.)

Em has obeyed my summons from the Armoury; presumably she’s left someone safe in charge of it.  She’s as hard as diamonds and hotter than Hell, and it takes a certain amount of concentration for me to drag my eyes away from the way she fills out that two-piece uniform – particularly the top half, which as always appears as if someone poured her breasts into it and forgot to say ‘When’.  I’d give the orders for her to strip off and climb in with me right now, but the fact is that in my still relatively weakened state I’m too tempting a target for her ambition, and while it would (as the old song has it) be ‘a hell of a way to die’, I’m not quite ready for even such a delectable death as being ‘accidentally’ suffocated by Em Gomez’s bosom.  Maybe later I’ll order some rather less creative soul to attend to my requirements; still, it’s a positive sign that my libido is once again able to respond to a luscious pair of breasts and a shapely arse.

In the meantime, she’s the ideal assistant for the investigation I have in mind.  Whilst she would murder me without turning a hair if she thought she could step into my newly vacant shoes, she is likewise lying low till the new establishment fights itself into its final shape.  Neither of us wish to draw too much attention to ourselves, and those interesting facts about her background that I’ve carefully amassed would draw altogether too much attention to her were I suddenly to be no longer in a position to suppress them.

I’ve filled her in on my predicament and assured her that since Phlox is a cowardly shite who knows precisely when to keep his mouth shut, should one word of anything we discover be found on the ship’s grapevine then she will live longer than she’d prefer to in the circumstances.  I have a contact with his ear pressed firmly to said grapevine, and if a word is uttered then he will hear it and whisper it in mine.

She believes this, which is very sensible of her.  One of the things I particularly like about Em (apart from her bosom, of course) is her sense of self-preservation.  She respects my talents, though I dare say she sniggered a bit over my falling for that fucking bomb trick. 

Oh, well.  Everyone’s entitled to an off day, that’s what I say.  Well, everyone who happens to be me, anyway.

So, she’s arrived with a fearsome-looking disrupter rifle cradled in her arms, and makes sure the Vulcan gets a good look at it.  The little casual exchange between us on the subject of how agonizing a death it produces is merely, so to speak, the icing on the cake; some of its technology was actually useful in the Agony Booth, though it takes things a little too far on the top setting.

Is fear an emotion?  I have _so_ much trouble with the definition.  Tch, this business of semantics, I never was any good at it in school.  At a guess, though, even Vulcans have enough imagination to conjure up what a kiss from that disrupter would feel like, and by the pallor of his face this one’s imagination is going into overdrive.

Phlox is standing to one side.  He looks as though the only thing he needs to make his entertainment schedule complete is a bowl of fucking popcorn.

“Tell him what I want,” I snarl.

It seems to take an inordinately long time.  Do all Denobulans love the sound of their own bloody voices this much?

The youthful octogenarian is positively ashen by the time the situation is outlined.  He stares at me, his eyes wide with terror.

I read some report or other once in which I was described as having the eyes of a snake.  I thought that was quite a piquant description, actually.  I know the full value of a mesmerising stare, and I turn one on him now.  If he doesn’t already know the danger he’s in, I’m perfectly ready to elucidate it for him.

“I want you to understand something, Vulcan.” I speak very quietly and very slowly, just in case he might possibly think I’m joking.  “You’ll do what you’ve been told and find out what was done to me, and then you’ll tell me everything.  Every.  Last.  Thing.  You won’t invent anything, you won’t leave anything out.  And then you’ll forget you were ever even in here, or so help me I’ll tie you down and put an electrode up each of your nostrils and burn every individual cell in your brain, one at a time.”

His vocal cords appear to have become dysfunctional, but he manages to nod, jerkily.

“So what are you waiting for?”

Em shifts the rifle lazily into the ‘ready’ position.  Personally, I think the double click of the setting control being moved to ‘Full’ verges on the melodramatic, but there’s no doubt that it’s effective.

Not, of course, that she’d fire it before something demonstrably terminal had happened to me, I understand that perfectly, but she and I have this balanced relationship.  We know where we stand with each other.  It would be a lot of trouble to have to deal with the repercussions of my untimely demise _and_ have to start jockeying to take my place, particularly when I’m such a handy target for any lingering resentment Empress Sato may be harbouring.  Em would really rather I stayed intact, at least for the time being, to continue my useful existence as her stalking horse.  Hence the rifle.  She may be unable to save me, but I can die at least moderately content in the knowledge that my murderer will have a very short and extremely unpleasant life after I predecease him; it would be difficult to find a stalking horse anywhere near as good as I am.  (Though I’m sure I’ve never really understood why Hoshi found it appropriate to look down her elegant nose at me.  We were both whores in our own respective ways; I was just slightly less adept at switching my allegiance, whereas she’d change hers at the drop of a pair of lacy knickers.)

I have no option.  I lie back on the bio-bed and let the damned Vulcan walk up close to me.  I hate anybody getting close to me who isn’t in restraints I’ve personally fastened.  I’d put this bastard in them too, but if he’s going to be messing inside my head I don’t suppose clamps on his wrists would be much deterrent.

He puts his fingers carefully to specific points on my face.  My uninjured left arm is pulled back, ready to drive my fist into his ribs hard enough to break a few at the first sign he has ambitions on my eyes.

V’Rel, that’s his name.  Not that it matters.

He mutters a few words, some Vulcan mumbo-jumbo about our minds merging.  I’m too busy watching for the first sign of a stupid move to pay any attention to them.

And then it begins.


	3. Chapter 3

The next couple of minutes are quite indescribable.  It’s an experience I never want to repeat.  It’s a hundred, a _thousand_ times worse than being raped.  The exposure, the vulnerability, I… I want to fight it off and have nothing to fight with.  I feel from him something I can’t bear: pity.  I’ll kill him for that.  I’ll tear his colon out and use it for a fucking skipping rope while he’s still alive to watch, and see who pities who then.

He doesn’t have to tell me anything.  He just shows me.

The dogs again.  Not dogs: wolves.  Not wolves: too big, and their eyes are blue.  A big one, white splotched with grey, and a brown female.  Puppies, newborn and weak.  They die easily, and I survive.  That doesn’t worry me, it’s the first rule of the Empire and I know it in my blood and bones.

The memories are falling down on to me like boulders I can’t evade, shattering the past that I believed in.  Robbing me of the truths on which the few things I believe are built.

They crushed my ankle.  Kept me pinned down and dropped a fucking great rock on it that it took three of them to lift.  I couldn’t walk, couldn’t defend myself, couldn’t escape.  It got infected and there was no food, I was starving to death while those fucking wolves watched me trying to keep myself alive on grass and insects.

I knew what they wanted.  They wanted me to be a fucking animal, to just do what I was told.  Like I was going to take orders from a sodding dog.

I tried to escape by crawling into a river and they pulled me out again and savaged me, but they didn’t kill me.  The bites got infected too and I knew I was going to die, and it got harder and harder every day to remember that I wasn’t a dog, that I was a human and that someday I was going to get off that fucking planet and find the people who’d stranded me there knowing what was going to happen to me.  (I did find them, too, they were expendable and it was a useful demonstration to the Section that I’d learned all those sweet little lessons about killing.  Put it this way, I hadn’t been dragged far enough back to my humanity yet to bother with weapons.)

I broke.  A part of me knows that a stream of expletives is bursting from my throat as I remember that I broke, the fucking wolves broke me and I killed like a wolf and thought like a wolf and had to be shot with a tranquillizer gun when they came back for me.  Then they put me in a lab and shot me up with drugs till I remembered enough to be useful, and then they put me in an extermination squad, where I worked my way up the ranks till I was deemed suitable material for protecting the Empire’s interests aboard a starship.

And here I am.  The man who believed he was a wolf, who was turned into an automaton to do the Section’s killing for them.

The Vulcan steps back.  The fear has left his face, and he doesn’t look away from me.  I feel bereft, and bewildered by the feeling, because I’ve been alone all my life and that’s the way I like it.  I’m safest then.

He thinks I’m a monster, but all he feels for me is pity.

By the bitterest of ironies, if he still feared me I could let him live.  But I know that if he walks away from this he’ll embody my lost soul, the mirror of what I could have been.  And in this world there are no alternatives, no options.  The nice guy always loses.

What use would a soul be to me, anyway?

I know that when Vulcans die they hand on their _katra_ for safe-keeping.  There’s no _katric ark_ here, and I know that eternal oblivion would be preferable to the alternative…

His eyes look at me peacefully.

I don’t use a weapon.  I owe him that much.

I’ve killed people who were too scared to resist, I’ve killed people too weak or drunk or drugged to resist.  I’ve never killed anyone who just … didn’t.

I make it as quick and painless as I can, which is a first for me. 

When his body is lying still on the floor of Sickbay, I realise that Em and Phlox are looking at me very oddly, and moments later it dawns on me that it’s because there are tears running down my face, and I’m crying, unhinged sobs that I hardly recognise as my own.  I don’t even know whether it’s grief or rage that fills me till I feel as though my head will burst, maybe it’s both, but I know that someone will pay for both our lives.  Someone is going to bleed, for me and for V’Rel and for all the MACOs out there who were dumped on that fucking planet to have their heads unscrewed and put back on again the wrong way round for the Section’s benefit.

I’ll still kill and maim and torture and not give a shit, but from now on it’ll be for _my_ purposes.  And from this point on, my purpose will be to survive in Empress Hoshi Sato’s Empire.  To make myself useful – _invaluable_ – right up till the moment comes to strike.  I have so many useful contacts.  We MACOs are a dangerous lot, and with what I know now I’m the most dangerous of them all.  I even have a name for those who’ll come to my whistle, if I sound exactly the right note: the Army of the Dispossessed.

I know where to look and who to ask, the strangely obedient ones who will find this dangerous secret intriguing.  He won’t have died in vain, this Vulcan who never saw me before today.  Perhaps he realised that; perhaps he felt his death was necessary, to put me forever in his debt.

The only good there could ever have been in me is lying dead on the floor.  I could have loved him; the realisation doesn’t come too late, for there would never have been the right time for such a thing, not for me.  And let’s face it, this isn’t a world for the likes of him.  Only for the likes of me, for what I always will be now.

They wanted a killer.  They got a killer.  Only now the wolf’s slipped his leash, and nobody will be slipping it back on to me.  Not even V’Rel, whom I could have loved.

In the midst of my tears I find a smile.  Even Em steps backwards when she sees it.

Phlox clears his throat nervously.  “Did you, er … did you find out what you wanted to, Major?”

“Oh, yes.”  I smile at him as well.  “He told me everything I needed to know.”

I look down one more time at my lost soul.  He looks surprisingly peaceful still, considering.  A part of me is vaguely surprised that it’s not me lying down there, because it feels rather as though it ought to be.  Maybe it’s just because he became the katric ark for the Malcolm Reed I might have been, if only the world were different.

But it isn’t different. 

It is like it always was and probably always will be.  I just know more about it than I did, and I’ll make the most of that knowledge like the sneaky little bastard I’ve always been.

Phlox is, of course, dying to know what I’ve discovered, what these ‘memories’ consist of.  A second smile convinces him that asking would be a really, _really_ bad idea, and he backs away, giggles on a note almost of hysteria, and hurries away to arrange for the disposal detail.

Em restores the safety catch to the rifle (always a comforting sound when there’s nobody around to shoot on purpose any more), and looks at me thoughtfully.  At a guess she’s putting a few and a few together, and on the whole I wouldn’t be surprised if she was too far out in the end, but she won’t say anything.

She surprises me, however.  “You finished here, Major?”  The muzzle of the rifle describes a vague arc, signifying Sickbay in general.

Well, apart from scheduled visits for check-ups on my progress, I’ve been discharged to finish recuperating in my quarters.  After today, this is undoubtedly a relief to Phlox.  He probably worries that I might take up smiling at him on a regular basis.

“Don’t suppose you’ll be sorry,” says Em when I inform her of this situation.  She hesitates.  “I’m off duty in ten, and I’ve got a bottle of hooch in my quarters….”

My, this is a day of marvels.  It can’t be merely a happy coincidence that whoever poured her breasts into the uniform top this morning left it later than ever to say ‘When’, and with a powerful rifle resting across them she looks like my absolute epitome of a pin-up girl. (I’m tempted to order her to recreate the pose minus her uniform later so I can install a new wallpaper on my computer terminal, but even I know where the line is with Em.  It’s not as if she’s entirely normal at the best of times, which is one of the reasons we get on so beautifully.)

This might, of course, be the first move in a more subtle attempt to prise out what lies beneath the events of a few minutes ago.  She’s quite clever enough for that.  But whether or not, there are opportunities here that I’m certainly not going to pass up.  After all, exercise is a necessary part of the recuperation process, and I’ve had experience before of the sort of strenuous exercise Em enjoys.  As far as that part of our recreational activities goes, we’re on very much the same wavelength, and a very twisted wavelength it is.  

And after that…

The reckoning begins.

 

**The End.**

**Author's Note:**

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